Taiwan has produced the most-cited publications on educational research projects around the world during the past three years. This is according to a recently published research conducted by Tseng Yuen-hsien, a research fellow and deputy head of National Taiwan Normal University's (NTNU's) Information Technology Center.
Research shows that Taiwan led in the world in terms of the average number of times a research paper was cited by other scientific publications between 2010 and 2012. Tseng and his fellow researchers also found that the number of papers published in the field of education has been on the rise since 1990.
He said during a press conference held Monday by NTNU and National Central University that the more frequently a research paper is cited, the more valuable and inspiring the research project is considered to be.
Tseng analysed publication records from scientific citation-indexing services Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus, which covered 216 and 573 journals, respectively, in the field of education in 2012. According to the research done by Tseng and his colleagues, which was published in the June edition of Scientometrics, Taiwan's citations per paper (CPP) between 2010 and 2011 were 1.73, based on WoS data. Scientometrics is a journal concerned with the quantitative features and characteristics of science and scientific research.
The Netherlands trailed Taiwan during the same period, with a CPP of 1.55, Tseng noted.
Taiwan's leading position remained unchanged after Tseng included the 2012 WoS data, which was downloaded July 25 following the publication of the research in June, the researchers added.
The findings, Tseng said, show the improving visibility and quality of Taiwan's research in the field of education. Tseng also pointed out that such results are not easy to achieve, since English is the dominant language of international scientific journals, but not the native language of most Taiwanese researchers.
